Our very own Cindy Kuhrasch is one of the Spring 2023 Staff Innovation Grant recipients! The Staff Innovation grant was developed by the Dean’s Office in the School of Education (SoE) seeks to reward the ingenuity and dedication of SoE university and academic staff through a new funding opportunity for innovative projects. The grant seeks to provide staff members with funds to develop exciting and innovative new initiatives that will have a positive impact on the SoE community.
When asked what receiving this grant means to her, Cindy responded as follows:
“Receiving the staff innovation grant to develop a smartphone app of community-building activities is a terrific win for the physical education program.
We have known for a long time that physical educators develop skills in the ability to create strong, authentic, and welcoming communities if they receive the proper training and resources.
Our physical education program provides that training, but we wanted to create some sort of resource for all educators everywhere to have access to the resources as well.
Resources for community building can be defined as movement-based activities that are simple in nature, but which are very specifically designed for participants to practice the social and emotional skills necessary for the development of real and authentic communities.
The app we are creating will consist of hundreds of these types of activities and will include directions, video examples, equipment needed, and information to help facilitators lead them. The activities will be categorized by the type of activity, and the social and emotional skills that will be taught within them.
Overall, this is a terrific resource that we believe anyone facilitating any kind of community building, in nearly any setting, can use. With that being said, this project has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of individuals all over the world.
And just to think, it all starts with the physical education staff and students, along with the team at DoIT of the UW-Madison campus.”
We are so excited to see the awesome impact of the PE program’s awesome idea!
Read more about the eight projects awarded here: https://education.wisc.edu/news/eight-projects-awarded-staff-innovation-grants/